Rush, rush. Finals coming up. Christmas shopping to do. Illustrations to finish. Hope all is well for you!

Busy day today so this piece is presented without comment. Feel free to leave yours.

Hmmm. I didn’t notice until I started posting these but I seem to have used purple as a background color an awful lot. I wonder if I’m going to need to change than when I finally assemble these into banner illustrations for Skookworks?

The older I get the easier it’s becoming for me to do simple drawings. I’m currently working on a series of illustrations that require a dip pen and lots of cross hatching and I keep thinking how much faster it would be to ink them with a brush.

This fellow isn’t based on any specific species of monkey. I was thinking about the Japanese macaques that I’ve seen in photos beach combing and taking saunas in hot springs so he looks somewhat like one of those. This guy looks like he could use a sauna.

Back in 2000 when I heard that Tim Burton would be directing a remake of the Planet of the Apes I thought, that might not suck. Burton makes visually stunning films and handles weird subject matter pretty well.

Then, when the publicity department started sending out folks for interviews, I caught Burton talking about the film. He said something to effect that he enjoyed working on the movie because monkeys are funny. At that point I was pretty sure that the movie would … be less than wonderful. Not because monkeys aren’t funny. They are. But they’re everything else that humans are as well. So, unless you’re making a comedy, the statement “Monkeys are funny” indicates that maybe you’re not thinking about your material properly. Also, MONKEYS aren’t APES any more than lemurs are monkeys.

And what does that have to do with this fellow? Not a thing really.

And here is yesterday’s piece with color added. As you can see I couldn’t resist using a gradient to suggest fading sunlight.

This is another piece designed for flat colors. I’m very impressed by artists who manage to present an illustration with a few lines and shadows. I’m constantly preventing myself from filling every space with fiddly little lines. Folks, like Eduardo Risso and Alex Toth, who are masters of complex simplicity leave me in awe.

Does the story seem more obvious once there’s color in the picture? Would the choice of colors change your idea for the story?

Why is he wearing the mask? Is he going to a costume party? Or is he getting ready slaughter a bunch of annoying teenagers (played by actors in their mid to late twenties)? Or does he plan to do some welding and he likes to personalize his tools? Perhaps he doesn’t like his face? Or perhaps he knows that others don’t like it so he keeps it hidden out of politeness?

What’s the story here?